This weekend, Mayor Greg Fischer attended the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Miami and landed on Politico Magazine’s list of “America’s 11 most interesting mayors.” The article begins: “At a time when one yellow-haired, Twitter-happy personality dominates American discourse, it’s easy to forget how much political energy — and important new thinking— emanates not from the nation’s capital but from city hall.”

What is Mayor Fischer doing that has brought Politico’s attention to Louisville’s city hall? To quote Politico quoting him: “It’s data, man.”

Writer Katelyn Fossett praises Mayor Fischer’s open data initiatives including the introduction of LouieStat and public health initiatives. She describes him as both folksy and geeky.

As Insider reported last week, at six-and-a-half years into his tenure as mayor, Fischer considers himself one of the “senior” mayors at the conference, where he presented research done with the Brookings Institution on the rise of urban innovation districts. The report is now available online.

Louisville’s Office of Innovation awarded Amazon Dream Big award

Louisville’s Office of Innovation has won a Dream Big award for large cities in Amazon’s “City on a Cloud” contest.

According to the citation: “By utilizing machine learning, real-time traffic data, and IoT, Louisville is building an adaptive traffic flow management system that can sense detrimental systemic changes to traffic and automatically adjust city infrastructure to mitigate the impact.”

The city won a Best Practices award in the contest, which celebrates innovation in cloud computing, two years ago also for traffic management using the Waze app.

“Cloud services are a key component to Smart City technologies and advancing intelligent traffic management and logistics that improve the daily lives of residents in big and small ways,” Grace Simrall, chief of Civic Innovation, told the Lane Report.

Speaking of traffic…

The Indiana Department of Transportation has announced that roadwork will occur on and near the Sherman Minton Bridge on and off all summer. Expect lane closures and delays, although the department says that work will not occur during high-traffic periods.

Kentucky crushes EPA’s 2017 Energy Star rankings

The EPA’s annual Top Cities list shows which metro areas were home to the most Energy Star certified buildings in the previous year and Louisville (7) and Lexington (10) both rank in the top 10 for midsize cities.

But where Kentucky really shines is in the top 10 small cities list, where six of the 10 are in Kentucky. Bowling Green (2), Madisonville (3), Frankfort (5), Bardstown (6), London (7) and Elizabethtown (9) are on the list for most buildings and most cost savings.